Monday, December 22, 2014

Community Affairs

End of year wrap-ups and critics' annual lists of the top 10 events in their field aren't really my thing. Yet it gives me great satisfaction to note small accomplishments which would probably seem insignificant to most other people.

Mind you, these tiny milestones are not the kind of events most people would put on their bucket lists. Some might wish to go skydiving on their 75th birthday or travel to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, Others might yearn to participate in an intensely intimate and sensual threeway or go scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef. Here's Inga Swenson (who played Lizzie Curry in the original Broadway cast of 110 in the Shade) singing about the happiness that can be found in "Simple Little Things."

When one attends a great deal of theatre and opera (and watches numerous independent films being screened at film festivals), one's curiosity is often focused on what's new, what's innovative, and what's coming down the pike. Some of us, however, have certain kinds of unfinished business in the back of our minds.

Some of us are simply craving some spare time that we can devote to catching up on films we missed via Netflix (I just had the extreme pleasure of watching Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me).

While those traveling on London's Underground have grown accustomed to recorded warnings to "Mind The Gap," some of us like to use our spare time to fill in the gaps in our cultural landscape. Two Bay area productions (each intimately focused on the course of human events in a particular community) allowed me to do so in December.

In the following hour-long clip, you can watch the New York cast of Avenue Q (ten years into the show's run) discuss the challenges of auditioning, attending "Puppet Camp," understudying various roles, and learning how to "feel the audience." Many questions about what actually transpires onstage during a performance are answered in the session (which was taped at the New York offices of Google) while revealing some juicy tidbits about puppet design and construction, how a female puppeteer learns which motions will best inform the audience that Trekkie Monster is masturbating, and what it's like to simulate sex between puppets.

Although I missed last season's production of Avenue Q by the New Conservatory Theatre Center in the 131-seat Decker Theatre, I looked forward to seeing the show this month because I was eager to see how it plays in a small venue. Using Kuo-Hao Lo's unit set and Wes Crain's costumes (with puppet direction by Allison Daniel), Jeff Whitty's snarky script lost none of its wit, even if rude puppets have become the norm rather than the deliciously vulgar shock that Avenue Q offered to theatregoers in its earliest days.

When performers are in such close range of the audience, small details which may be missed by those who are seeing the show for the first time can become glaringly apparent to others. I was surprised to see how a small theatre can expose a production's weaknesses rather than showcasing its strengths.

What struck me most was how weak the show's puppeteers were at syncing their voices and body language with their puppets. Although most of the cast from the 2013 production was returning for a repeat engagement, the evening's most appealing work came from Teresa Attridge (whose performance as Christmas Eve was pure theatrical dynamite).

While songs like "It Sucks To Be Me," "If You Were Gay," "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist," "The Internet Is For Porn," "There's a Fine, Fine Line," and "Schadenfreude" retain their caustic bite, the show's staying power is surprisingly reinforced by the growing inequality in people's incomes and the sorry fact that, ten years after Avenue Q's Broadway debut, it is just as hard for a newly-graduated English major to get a job.

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It's hard to believe that, in the course of 50+ years of avid theatregoing, I had never gotten around to seeing a stage production of Our Town. Why not? For a good part of my life I was intensely involved in covering the growing regional opera scene in the United States. On numerous other occasions, bad timing and geographic inconvenience made it impossible for me to catch notable productions of Thornton Wilder's 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece.

The gaping hole in my cultural landscape was recently filled by the Shotgun Players, whose wondrous production of Our Town takes one's breath away with its beauty, theatrical craft, earnestness, and simplicity. But, as director Susannah Martin stresses, as one crows about Our Town's simplicity, it's easy to overlook the strength of Wilder's script.

Working on Nina Ball's skeletal set (gently enhanced by Heather Basarab's exquisite lighting, Christine Crook's costumes, and Theodore J. H. Hulsker marvelous sound design), Ms. Martin has staged Wilder's play with an ensemble of gifted local actors whose skill at communicating with an audience (while seeming to underplay their roles) may well be one of this production's greatest assets.

Shotgun's production is also strengthened by the intimacy of the 100-seat Ashby Stage as a venue and Ms. Martin's ability to have various characters located among the audience (or running up and down the stairs that bracket the auditorium's main seating area).

While there are many moments in Wilder's play where the plainspoken beauty of his language (combined with the simplicity of life in the early years of the 20th century) can trick audiences into thinking that they're examining the bare bones of life without any of the complications foisted on us by today's technology, the revelatory third act makes one realize that the time we spend on earth might only be a prelude to the blessed peace that follows. Without a doubt, Thornton Wilder's drama will haunt many an audience long after you they have left the theatre. This is also a play which will be appreciated far more deeply by people who have lived longer lives.